Weakness
by Birddi
Summary: Dean had many weaknesses, and introspection often came best with Jack Daniels for company.


Title: Weakness

Author: birddi  
Rating: PG-13 for Dean's mouth.

Fandom: Supernatural

Pairing: Castiel/Dean very squint-worthy

AN: More to come. Might have a bit of spoilers, but maybe not.  
Disclaimer: Ain't mine – ask CW.  
Link on personal LJ:

.#cutid1  
Summary: Introspections from Dean Wincester.

Story Text:

Dean had many weaknesses. He was afraid, and he often failed at what he thought he should do, should be. He was scared of flying, of bugs that didn't die after you stepped on them, and even the occasional psychic. He thought it was rather normal, all said in done. He had other quirks and fears, and things he'd rather not bring to light. He didn't like the dark, but had grown far too acclimated to be truly bothered by it. He was acquainted with a lot of things he wasn't comfortable with, and what was dangerous he killed. It was how he was raised, and how he would live.

But Dean also knew that he had issues that neither time nor distance would ever cure. And if he couldn't face them, and he couldn't fix them, he lived with them. Or he tied to. When everyone you love, everyone you have a claim to willingly leaves you, it's hard to try and live. It's hard to want to. But that was something he had faced and fought, and in some ways had left behind him.

He also he had this things with fire, and wasn't sure if it was healthy. He read a book that Sammy would have laughed himself silly over if he knew Dean, of all people, had picked it up to look at, but it made him wonder. A rough-leather cover to a psychology book at the back of a small town library stored on a bottom shelf at the back corner. Pages marked in yellow highlighter and dog-eared in sections, it was from the early eighties. He remembers that book, that time very clearly, and in some ways he'd rather wished he didn't. It was his first hunt by himself, Sam having long taken off and Dad just that week.

His hangover, both from alcohol and pills, was finally abetting four days later.

He thought it was something more than what it was, something older and more dangerous. But after he popped it open, he didn't just leave. It was one of the few times in his life he didn't have a next hunt, and didn't have to check in with anyone. He had hated it.

But sitting on the floor in the sunlight of a backwater town's library he read about different childhood traumas and what the effects were. He snorted; high-pitched wet noises of a suffocating giggle, though some of it. Remained dead sober though others.

But it was interesting, not life altering or anything, but interesting.

He wasn't sure what he thought about fire being an extension of his mother.

He didn't hate fire though, even though he would often think that fire took his mother from him. He hated evil, things that twisted people in something other. Like the things took goodness and mothers away from their families. He hated them, and he killed them. Made them stop, made them go away. He hated evil that was supernatural and things that were human and evil. Like the things that forced fourteen-year old boys to their knees, with promises of grocery money for their efforts. He hated them and now when he got the chance he stopped them. And hurt them so it wouldn't happen again. He liked hurting them, although he didn't actively seek them. Sometimes when you're tainted by darkness, have seen and know too much, it comes and it finds you.

More often then not, when you stare out into the abyss…

He hated over priced gas, and he didn't appreciate drivers who couldn't turn on their turn signal. He didn't like a lot of things. An empty passenger seat, cold coffee, animals named Mr. Fluffy were things he could generally live without. He hated rats and witches with equal abhorrent.

He hated his father's absence, but he had hated Sam's more.

He hated the police, although not as severely as he hated demons. They were assholes with authority, but they were human and some of them weren't bad. Lawyers and celebrities were tolerated as: not good but not evil enough to kill. Celebrity lawyers, however, were evil incarnate and even if he didn't kill them, he wasn't going out of his way to make friends either.

He had mixed feelings on colleges. But it was law schools, although he wouldn't ever talk about it, which he hated with something far past loathing.

Hell was a place he had went to, and never wanted to return to. Deserved to be returned to, but not a place he would like to have been. He didn't hate Hell. Hell was something he deserved, knew it like he knew his name was Dean. Before he went he had long past accepted that the light at the end of the tunnel was going to be brimstone. People like him were marked by darkness, and darkness wasn't something that was needed in heaven, needed with his mom.

He was ashamed of a lot of things: himself, and his failings and his weaknesses. He cheated and lied. He stole from good people and bad. He ruined memories of loved ones with accusations and truth. He angered, and raged and hit and fought. He hurt men both deserving and not, and on the occasion he had hit a woman – possessed or not. It had happened. He fucked, and was fucked. Took his pretty face and his body and found comfort in sex with strangers. Took it gentle and hard, but he wasn't always careful.

He might have a son. He hated that he might not have known about it. He almost hated Lisa for not being honest, but he hated his lifestyle because he knew she was right. He hated that he understood. Ben was better off without a father then with him as one. And hadn't Sammy, the boy he had raised, proven that?

So he held himself accountable for what he did wrong, be it on a hunt or with his family. He blamed himself for living when others didn't. Knew he was guilty of every life not saved and of every life he had a hand in ruining. The fact he had ruined Sam's wasn't worth repeating but was worth acknowledging.

But he hadn't hated himself, not really, until hell.

He hated how weak he was. He hated who he was.

Dean had many weaknesses, things both his father and Sammy thought weren't characteristics of a strong person. It would make sense that it was these points of contentions that things feel apart, and Dean was often lost in the widening cavern between the two.

Dean cared too much about the victims for his father's comfort. Sucked too strongly in by sympathy and regret that John had often feared for his son. Dean took too much blame upon his shoulders for John. Although it was John more than often was the one who felt the need to self-chastise over a hunt gone sideways or to give Dean a pat on the back should Dean be the one close to breaking. Dean thought John was a complicated man.

Dean cared far, far too much about Sammy for John's sanity, and Dean knew that John blamed himself for that.

But Sam, his brother, the boy he raised, his baby boy, thought he never cared enough. It had broken a piece of him when Sam had said that. Although Sam knew Dean loved him, and Dean cared about people it wasn't to the measure that Sam wanted. Too often fooled by a quick smile and a quicker quip of a waitress's backside to look deeper, Sam was young then, so much younger. Not age really, but in his ability to see past his own nose when he said those words. But Dean remembered them. Now, Dean knows that Sam wanted Dean not to care more, but to care in a way that Sam could easily recognize and categorize. Now, after Dean went to hell for him and more like their father then ever, Sam thought Dean cared too much. Now after Dean went to hell, and now when he couldn't care about anything but trying to feel numb was when he cared too much.

Irony in all its nonsensical forms.

Dean privately, and not so privately, thought Sam just like to bitch.

Dean loved. Few things in his life were worth loving, worth living for, and that made them all the more important. He didn't often allow himself moments of inner retrospection, had too often found things he didn't like. But sometimes, often with Jack Daniels for company, he thought about deeper things. He thought that maybe everyone loved equally. Had a certain measure of love that they could dispersed on things they owned, people they knew and cared for. But because he had such few things to call his own. Such few people who touched his life, that maybe it was okay that he loved them a bit more.

If the yellow-eyed demon's words didn't bite his ass, well he wasn't sure what would.

But what he had, he tried to love as fiercely as he fought.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he loved things too much, but he had such few things to tie him to this world he didn't really want to stop. He didn't think he could.

He loved Sam.

Nothing, not Sam, not God could change that.

He loved pie. He really loved apple pie.

He loved his father and mother, although bitter waters surrounded it at times. Sometimes he wished things were different, but the moment he thinks that he stops and takes it back with everything he could. Looks over his shoulders and tries to move on quickly. Knowing his life things could go much, much worse.

Although after Hell, he vaguely wonders how. He is terrified bone-deep of ever knowing.

He loved Caleb and Bobby and Pastor Jim. They were a family of sorts, holding on because there was nothing else. They were friends of another sort.

He might not love them like the others but he cared for Miriam, and Jack, and Ash, and Ellen, and Jo, and many people who went in and out of his life like a game of rotating tops. He cared for Ben and the kids he tried to help. They were people that made life what it was at times. He wished he could protect them, and so that's what he did. He took up a gun filled with rock salt and a machete made of silver and drove out into the night and killed the evil.

He didn't think it was that hard of a concept.

He loved his car. His beautiful black Impala had never done him wrong. He could write poetry, sing ballads, about it. She was his one and only companion who from the ride home from the hospital had taken care of him. Jokingly John had said that the backseat was where Dean was conceived. Dean didn't doubt it.

She was his transport home and for the four years afterwards. Then after a blaze that took everything, and he was left with a broken father and a needy baby she was his home. He knew every inch of her, inside and out. He talked to her, and in some ways she talked back. When he wasn't well was hurt, she drove smoother, needed gas less. He treated her right when she wasn't feeling well, and she did the same.

He had bleed on her, had pissed and fucked on her. Had screamed and cried, had been at his moth lost and his most loved within her metal shell. She kept his secrets.

He was afraid that he was too ruined from hell, and that she wouldn't recognize him. He was so happy to see her at the time that he hadn't thought of much else, but it was in the back of his mind. She didn't seem as comfortable with him, and it had hurt. He had swept his eyes around the car frantic to find the difference. His eyes had landed on the stupid music thing that Sam had put in, and after yelling at Sam things had brightened. She was a bit different, and so was he. They both were marked by things unwanted, forced against their will into something.

He had hated Sam for a moment, a brief flash in time, but stale in his mind. He couldn't let the feeling go quick enough.

He wished she hadn't changed. But that was all right. It would have to be. So he was different, and she had something different. But they were together, and they still had the same rhythm. They had to. Everything from family, to lovers, to gas prices changed so rapidly for him that he didn't think it was too bad to pin everything on her willingness to remain in stasis. He liked the repetition of his music for the same reason, something that he could keep from changing when nothing in his world seemed to settle. His car liked it too, but sometimes when it was just the two of them he would listen to jazz and he smiled when she became the embodiment of the music. So she treated him right and he returned the favor.

When Sam left and Dad left she was all that he had. He was all she had.

If he projected on to her, or personified her in ways that people didn't like, couldn't understand he didn't care. Sam didn't understand, and neither had John. But that was alright she was his.

She was his, and he was hers. He had been made in that car, and he had rebuilt her. There wasn't much more he could do about that. But they had a hand in creating each other. He had liked that.

The trip back in time was a low blow and something he didn't like to think about. But it made the trip and the outcome of that conversation with a younger version of his father and the purchase, to cement that fact into his soul deeper and more firmly then Hell or Heaven. She was his, and in turn he was her.

He had more faith in her than in Sam, than their father, and more than in himself. It was terribly, horrifying that he had more faith in his car then he did in the angel that visited him. Horrifying, but not actually surprising. His world and his perspective of it had shaken by an angel in badly chosen clothes and a terribly case of bed-head. God was made real to him, and he hadn't liked it. But it didn't matter. Not really.

She and him were still together, lame ipod accessory and all.

So now, God existed, Sam was fucking a demon, and he might have to stop Sam or go back to hell, and that was something he was going to have to come to grips with.

When he asked her what she thought of that, she had made a sputter and stalled out. His eyes had watered and he forced a smile. Patting the steering wheel fondly, thank something Sam had been elsewhere at the time. He had answered, "Yeah, me too."

God existed, alright. He could deal. So maybe it was horrifying and all types of wrong, but Dean just had more faith in his car's love of him, something made of metal and rubber and grease and hard work, than he did in any of Castiel's word about God's love. The fact that he even had to come to this conclusion was a bit funny, he could pretend to be drunk enough to have it be funny. He thought that just about accurately summed up his life.

Castile told him that God loves him, and Dean didn't laugh, didn't cry. He almost wanted to cut Castiel's tongue out, and would probably have an attempt at it if visions of himself in Hell hadn't been so strong. Instead he locked himself into the bathroom and puked himself silly. Took four sleeping pills and a swig of Jack and curled him self up in the cold tub trying to forget the heat of Hell. He took that scream, that emotion of hysteria and hatred and held on to it as tight as he could. Dragged it down and locked it far, far below. Wouldn't let his mind even wander to those feelings, couldn't.

He didn't want to hate Castiel, he could. Oh, but he could.

He could hate Castiel for changing his world, for giving him doubts on things making sense in this world, for thinking that Dean could for a moment hurt his brother – or that Dean might have to. For destroying the fantasy that something might love him enough to save him, rather than saving him for a mission. Sweeping in and crushing any thought of comfort and worth, he could go back to Hell. Probably would in the end anyhow.

He could even hate Castiel for taking him from Hell, when so clearly he deserved to be there. It might not be right, but he could hate Castiel for many things but he didn't want to hate the angel in a meat-suit for lying to him.

God loved him.

Dean could hate Castiel for many things. But the lack of understanding in blue eyes was what he did hate.

You didn't do that to things you loved.

God might have loved him. Dean allowed that.

Once. Maybe. Before the fire. Before the first time he had to decide if Sam was more important than he was. Before the first, and only, time his Dad had hit him out of drunken anger. Before Sam and Dad left, running so fast away from him and everything he was. Funny how they both left him when he represented opposing things for them both, to Sam he was everything wrong and fucked-up and not normal. To Dad, Dean was all that was left of normal. Both running away to either escape Dean, or to protect Dean – it had been damn funny after his second bottle.

Before loneliness, and the only solace was his car. Before his car had broken into a billion pieces of metal by a demon and an eighteen wheeler, long before Dean was broken along with it. Dad had died, and there was no coming back for that. Maybe it was possible that he had been loved by a god before he had to put her back together piece by mother fucking piece. But that was before Dad died, and long before Sam died. Before he sold his soul, and before an angel dragging him out of hell had ruined it all. God might have loved him. Once. Maybe.

But even if he deserved it, Hell was the christening act of God's lack of care, lack of love.

So maybe he was loved. Once. He doubted it though.

Dean didn't think there was much of him left to love.

So, not now. Maybe once, before everything he could have believed it. He would have loved God in return. Not now. God had taken too much. He couldn't, couldn't believe that. He honestly just couldn't. Wasn't drunk enough, could never be drunk enough to think of the possibilities. God might have loved him. Might still if he did the right thing, but there was a world of difference between that and what Dean was. Castiel still liked to dangle that carrot, and Dean had known nicer demons.

God's love for Sam's head is what it equated to.

God or Sammy, and it had never been a choice. He still hated the lack of understanding in Castiel's blue eyes.

So he didn't love God. So he looked at Castiel and said, "You're a real dick, you know that?"


End file.
